The absence of movements

I1

It's the absence of social movements in general that I think is the issue. In the past in the [International Socialists], at least in the incarnation that I was a part of...it was a very clear delineation. You don't take a position above a [union] steward position, that's it, and you don't challenge for [union] president because that leads to all kinds of other stuff and you certainly don't take a staff job by any means. I held to that for a long time. The conditions, I think, are different now. We're not seeing the same opportunities and where they exist [there are] bits of bubbling but not a boiling pot by any means. It's the absence of social movements that has folks like me going into full time jobs that we would never have taken in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Values in action

I7

We're not as good at making our messages attractive….People like to talk about their values and people make their political decisions, whether it's voting or...what they're engaged in, what they choose to support, and they do that based on values. They don't do that based on solid analysis for the most part….we've come to a point in human history, I guess, in our civilization, where it's not about solidly analyzing everything unless it has to do with you personally, unless it's like your RRSPs, then you do it, but in terms of your politics people vote their values.

Leadership and revolution

I23

...a belief in intrinsic spontaneity of the masses to be revolutionary without hard, slogging leadership….[is a] disease...

Resource wars

I25

Right now I think that the future is probably going to entail a lot of world crisis in terms of developing countries and resource wars and I think that'll probably hinge around three issues...peak oil, climate change, and natural resource depletion….I think resource wars are probably going to become more common. I think that as...climate change affects the world that Canada will probably gain a lot of population and be under pressure to exploit its natural resources a lot more. I'd suspect that we'll see this trend continue of sort of beefing up our borders and not letting people in almost like a worldwide [feudal] scenario, and I think that food and water are probably going to become the most valuable political tools...

Winning, solidarity, and common sense

I3

I guess in a grander way, I'm thinking of a quote...by Zygmunt Bauman who is a post-modern theorist. I remember reading an article of his and he ended by saying something along the lines of: the day you don't have to justify yourselves for being in solidarity with everybody else is the day that that's achieved. It's an abstract thought but in a way if you don't have to defend your decision about entering [into a relationship of] solidarity with someone, if you don't have to justify that, then it means that it's understood in common sense and therefore, if you don't have to explain that or justify that to anybody, then that means that you've won...in a way.

Indigenous knowledge

I7

You learn about history and all the really bad stuff that has happened, to the Indigenous population particularly, and I was like, wow, what keeps people motivated there?...if human society is going to get through what we're going through now, it's going to be because of the knowledge of indigenous peoples. I feel like there's that wealth of knowledge there that's just not tapped in the mainstream and it's the total opposite of the dominant culture.

In between winning and losing

I15

I can't conceptualize political movements as win-lose. Maybe I could conceptualize them as winning and losing in that it's a constant process. I don't think there is anything to win. Not only is it a myth but also it’s dejecting. If I try and think about what it would mean to win, I just can't, it's not possible for my brain to think about that and so anything that comes short of having won is then a failure. Even if I were to try and conceptualize winning and losing, obviously, I think right now we're losing but I do feel like I make gains when I have a conversation with my sister and...at the end of the conversation [she] commits to changing her behaviour in some way that I find impedes her ability to have meaningful social relations with other people, especially other women.

Winning

I1

At a base level, winning would mean workers control the means of production and community control of resources around us. I think it would be breaking down and getting rid of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other issues. Winning would mean ensuring that there's no one who's living in poverty at all. Winning would mean that kids have opportunities, that beginning at an early age whether it's early childhood education or making sure they've got food. Winning would mean a sense of communities being able to come together and make decisions that are relevant to their lives and have those decision-making processes matter in a way that they don't today. Winning would mean an entire transformation of society.

Capitalist cooptation

I6

I think the most dire consequence of the evolution of capitalism today is its capacity for cooptation. It is extremely adept at commodifying and co-opting any sort of movement at all, even the most radical. I think that the reformist strategies, whether they’re NGOs, or unions, or other things….I wouldn't say I reject all of them I would just say that all of those in and of themselves are not sufficient.

The fetish of the local

I5

I don't want to be programmatic about it but I certainly think there's something to the anarchist vision of free federated collectivities that makes a lot of sense to me. But I also agree that that's utopian in some ways, in the sense that I think that we will not solve the crises we currently face by retreating to the local, and imagining the local as a space that we can create a little life boat, and by growing our food locally, and by having very nice community assemblies, and by trying to just retreat to this imagined space of hearth and home that we'll somehow escape what's coming because it's only in building lines of communication and solidarity that we'll do that. I think that that's part of what it would mean to win to me. I'm not interested in creating a world or being part of a project that creates a world that revels in parochialism.